Inside the NYC Apartment Search & Building Report

When my partner Jamie and I started looking for apartments in New York, I kept running into the same problem: a StreetEasy listing tells you the rent, the square footage, and how many exposed-brick photos the broker could squeeze in, but nothing about whether the building actually has a track record of open violations, unresolved complaints, or eviction filings. So I built a small research tool of my own, using NYC's public open data instead of a leasing agent's pitch.

Paste an address or drop in a StreetEasy link and it queries HPD violations, DOB complaints, bedbug filings, and eviction history for that exact building, then shows how long the listing has been on the market. Beyond a single address, it also has a neighborhood explorer built on OpenStreetMap for walkability to transit and groceries, a browse view for HPD-preserved affordable housing tied into NYC Housing Connect, and a set of renter tools: an upfront-cost calculator, an application document checklist, and a lease red-flag scanner that runs entirely in the browser.

It's built on Next.js and deployed on Vercel, with all the housing data coming live from NYC's Socrata-based Open Data APIs rather than any commercial listing source. Everything here is public record, cross-referenced by address, so I can tell within a minute of finding a listing whether it's worth actually scheduling a tour.